Between Legend and Reality

Elev:
Profesor:

Summary
1.Life
1.1 Early life
1.2 London and theatrical career
1.3 Later years and death
2. Plays
2.1 Performances
2.2 Textual sources
3. Poems
3.1 Sonnets
4. Style
5.Influence
6.Critical reputation
7. Speculation about Shakespeare
7.1 Autorship
7.2 Religion
7.3 Sexuality
7.4 Portraiture
8.List of works
8.1 Classifications of plays
9. Bibliography
 William Shakespeare
1.Life

1.1 Early life

William Shakespeare was born in Stratford-upon-Avon, a small country town. He was the son of John
Shakespeare, a successful glover and alderman from Snitterfield, and of Mary Arden, a daughter of the gentry.
They lived on Henley Street, having married around 1557. The date of his birth is not known, but his baptismal
record was dated 26 April 1564. This is the first official record of
Shakespeare, as birth certificates were not issued in the time of Queen
Elizabeth. Because baptisms were normally performed within a few days
of birth it is highly likely Shakespeare was born in April 1564, although
the long-standing tradition that he was born on 23 April has no historical
basis (baptisms at this time were not invariably performed exactly three
days after birth as is sometimes claimed). Nevertheless, this date
provides a convenient symmetry because Shakespeare died on the
same day in 1616. It is also the Feast Day of Saint George, the patron saint of England, which might seem
appropriate forEngland's greatest playwright

Shakespeare's parents had eight children: Joan (born 1558, died in infancy), Margaret (15621563), William
(himself, 15641616), Gilbert (15661612), Joan (15691646), Anne (15711579), Richard (15741613), and
Edmund (15801607).

Shakespeare's father, prosperous at the time of William's birth, was prosecuted for participating in the black
market in the dealings of wool, and later lost his position as an alderman. Some evidence pointed to
possible Roman Catholic sympathies on both sides of the family.

Education
Shakespeare probably attended King Edward VI Grammar School in Stratford from the age of
seven.Edward VI, the king honoured in the school's name, had in the mid-16th century diverted money from
the dissolution of the monasteries to endow a network of grammar schools to "propagate good literature...
throughout the kingdom", but the school had originally been set up by the Guild of the Holy Cross, a church
institution in the town, early in the 15th century.It was further endowed by a Catholic chaplain in 1482. It was free
to male children in Stratford and it is presumed that the young Shakespeare attended,although this cannot be
confirmed because the school's records have not survived. While the quality of Elizabethan era grammar
schools was uneven, the school probably would have provided an intensive education inLatin grammar and
literature"as good a formal literary training as had any of his contemporaries"reinforced with frequent use
of corporal punishment. As a part of this education, the students would likely have been exposed to Latin plays, in
which students performed to better understand the language. One of Shakespeare's earliest plays, The Comedy
of Errors, bears similarity to Plautus's Menaechmi, which could well have been performed at the school.There is
no evidence that he received a university education.

Marriage
On 29 November 1582 at Temple Grafton near Stratford, the 18-
year-old Shakespeare married Anne Hathaway, who was 26. Two
neighbours of Hathaway, Fulk Sandalls and John Richardson,
posted bond that there were no impediments to the marriage. The
ceremony may have been arranged in some haste; Hathaway gave birth
six months later.

On 26 May 1583 Shakespeare's first child, Susanna, was baptised at

Stratford. Twin children, a son, Hamnet, and a daughter, Judith, were
baptised on 2 February 1585. Hamnet died in 1596, Susanna in 1649 and Judith in 1662.

After his marriage, Shakespeare left few traces in the historical record until he appeared on
the London theatrical scene. Indeed, the period from 1585 (when his twin children were born) until 1592 (when
Robert Greene called him an "upstart crow") is known as Shakespeare's "lost years" because no evidence has
survived to show exactly where he was or why he left Stratford for London. A number of stories are given to
account for his life during this time, including that Shakespeare got in trouble for poaching deer, that he worked as
a country school teacher, and that he minded the horses of theatre patrons in London. There is no documentary
evidence to support any of these stories and they all were recorded only after Shakespeare's death.

Shakespeares Family tree

 1.2 London and theatrical career

It is not known exactly when Shakespeare began writing, but contemporary allusions and records of
performances show that several of his plays were on the London stage by 1592. He was well enough known in
London by then to be attacked in print by the playwright Robert Greene in his Groats-Worth of Wit:

...there is an upstart Crow, beautified with our feathers, that with his Tiger's heart wrapped in a Player's hide,
supposes he is as well able to bombast out a blank verse as the best of you: and being an absolute Johannes
factotum, is in his own conceit the only Shake-scene in a country.

Scholars differ on the exact meaning of these words, but most agree that Greene is accusing Shakespeare of
reaching above his rank in trying to match university-educated writers, such as Christopher Marlowe, Thomas
Nashe and Greene himself. The italicised phrase parodying the line "Oh, tiger's heart wrapped in a woman's hide"
from Shakespeares Henry VI, Part 3, along with the pun "Shake-scene", identifies Shakespeare as Greenes
target.

Greenes attack is the first recorded mention of Shakespeares career in the theatre. Biographers suggest that his
career may have begun any time from the mid-1580s to just before Greenes remarks. From 1594, Shakespeare's
plays were performed only by the Lord Chamberlain's Men, a company owned by a group of players, including
Shakespeare, that soon became the leading playing company in London. After the death of Queen Elizabeth in
1603, the company was awarded a royal patent by the new king, James I, and changed its name to the King's
Men.

In 1599, a partnership of company members built their own theatre on the south bank of the River Thames, which
they called the Globe. In 1608, the partnership also took over the Blackfriars indoor theatre. Records of
Shakespeare's property purchases and investments indicate that the company made him a wealthy man. In 1597,
he bought the second-largest house in Stratford, New Place, and in 1605, he invested in a share of
the parish tithes in Stratford.

Some of Shakespeare's plays were published in quarto editions from 1594. By 1598, his name had become a
selling point and began to appear on the title pages. Shakespeare continued to act in his own and other plays
after his success as a playwright. The 1616 edition of Ben Jonson's Works names him on the cast lists for Every
Man in His Humour (1598) and Sejanus His Fall (1603). The absence of his name from the 1605 cast list for
Jonsons Volpone is taken by some scholars as a sign that his acting career was nearing its end. The First Folio of
1623, however, lists Shakespeare as one of "the Principal Actors in all these Plays", some of which were first
staged after Volpone, although we cannot know for certain which roles he played. In 1610, John Davies of
Hereford wrote that "good Will" played "kingly" roles. In 1709, Rowe passed down a tradition that Shakespeare
played the ghost of Hamlet's father. Later traditions maintain that he also played Adam in As You Like It and the
Chorus in Henry V, though scholars doubt the sources of the information.

Shakespeare divided his time between London and Stratford during his career. In 1596, the year before he bought
New Place as his family home in Stratford, Shakespeare was living in the parish of St. Helen's,Bishopsgate, north
of the River Thames. He moved across the river to Southwark by 1599, the year his company constructed the
Globe Theatre there. By 1604, he had moved north of the river again, to an area north of St Paul's Cathedral with
many fine houses. There he rented rooms from a French Huguenot called Christopher Mountjoy, a maker of
ladies' wigs and other headgear.

1.3 Later years and death

Rowe was the first biographer to pass down the tradition that Shakespeare retired to Stratford some years before
his death but retirement from all work was uncommon at that time, and Shakespeare continued to visit London.In
1612 he was called as a witness in a court case concerning the marriage settlement of Mountjoy's daughter, Mary.
In March 1613 he bought a gatehouse in the former Blackfriarspriory; and from November 1614 he was in
London for several weeks with his son-in-law, John Hall.

After 16061607, Shakespeare wrote fewer plays, and none are attributed to him
after 1613. His last three plays were collaborations, probably with John Fletcher,
[53]
who succeeded him as the house playwright for the Kings Men.

Shakespeare died on 23 April 1616 and was survived by his wife and two
daughters. Susanna had married a physician, John Hall, in 1607, and Judith had
married Thomas Quiney, a vintner, two months before Shakespeares death.

In his will, Shakespeare left the bulk of his large estate to his elder daughter
Susanna. The terms instructed that she pass it down intact to "the first son of her
body". The Quineys had three children, all of whom died without marrying. The
Halls had one child, Elizabeth, who married twice but died without children in 1670,
ending Shakespeares direct line. Shakespeare's will scarcely mentions his wife,
Anne, who was probably entitled to one third of his estate automatically. He did
make a point, however, of leaving her "my second best bed", a bequest that has
led to much speculation. Some scholars see the bequest as an insult to Anne, whereas others believe that the
second-best bed would have been the matrimonial bed and therefore rich in significance.
Shakespeare was buried in the chancel of the Holy Trinity Church two days after his death. The epitaph carved
into the stone slab covering his grave includes a curse against moving his bones, which was carefully avoided
during restoration of the church in 2008:

Good frend for Iesvs sake forbeare,

To digg the dvst encloased heare.
Bleste be ye man yt spares thes stones,
And cvrst be he yt moves my bones.

Modern spelling:

"Good friend, for Jesus' sake forbear,"

"To dig the dust enclosed here."
"Blessed be the man that spares these stones,"
"And cursed be he who moves my bones."

Sometime before 1623, a funerary monument was erected in his memory on the north wall, with a half-
effigy of him in the act of writing

Its plaque compares him to Nestor, Socrates, and Virgil. In 1623, in conjunction with the publication of the First
Folio, the Droeshout engraving was published.

Shakespeare has been commemorated in many statues and memorials around the world, including funeral
monuments in Southwark Cathedral and Poets' Corner in Westminster Abbey.
 2.Plays

2.1 Performances of William Shakespeare Plays

THE FIRST PERFORMANCES OF WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE PLAYS

We cannot be totally accurate about the actual first performance dates of many Shakespeare's play
because the documented evidence is simply not available but we can estimate the year in which they
were performed
Plays were performed very soon after they were written! The theatres wanted the Profit! New
Performances meant Bigger Audiences!

As soon as a play had been written it was immediately produced - printing followed productions! So the
actors initially used draft scripts called 'foul papers' or were prompted from off-stage

Plays were blatantly copied and stolen - read the section on Quarto Texts - and this plagiarism led to
different versions of some of William Shakespeare's plays! In Shakespeares time Copyright did not exist!

The plays were performed in a variety of venues. The huge open- air amphitheatres such as the Globe
Theatre or the smaller, indoor Playhouses such as The Blackfriars Theatre Playhouse

THE PERFORMANCES!

The performances were exciting! New Theatres! Great costumes and Props! Sound Effects! Visual effects!
In the amphitheatres there were smoke effects, the firing of a real canon, fireworks and spectacular 'flying'
entrances from the rigging in the top of the theatre called the 'heavens'

Music also accompanied productions at the Globe Theater

Summer performances would be held in the open air Theatres like the Globe and winter performances
would be produced in the indoor Playhouses like Blackfriars

There was not time for many rehearsals. It was important to put on new plays. Several different plays might
show at one theatre in one week - eleven performances of ten different plays

Shakespearean Actors generally only got their lines as the play was in progress called cue scripting the
Actors did not know the plot until the play was being performed!

Zero rehearsal time enabled a fast turnover in terms of new productions and a huge portfolio of different
plays. More Money!

There were no females in the Theatres. Young boy actors would take on these roles!

How much did it cost to see a play? Globe audiences paid one penny (which they put in a box by the door -
hence the term 'Box Office')

The penny allowed them to view the play by standing on the ground, in front of the stage ( these people
were called the Groundlings!)

The Playhouses were more expensive - the cheapest being two pennies!

Shakespeare acted in some of his own plays - read about this in William Shakespeare the Actor
 The performances were divided into three types - Histories, Comedies and Tragedies:

William Shakespeare Comedies

William Shakespeare Histories
William Shakespeare Tragedies

THE FIRST KNOWN PERFORMANCE DATES OF THE PLAYS BY WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE

Each of the Plays first known performance dates are detailed below

FULL SCRIPT, SUMMARY, CHARACTERS AND INFO ABOUT THE PLAYS BY SHAKESPEARE

The links highlighted below will provide access to the following:

Full Text/Script of the whole Play

Short Summary of each of his Plays

Information about each of his plays - first publications, number of words, history etc

The Cast and Characters in each of his Plays

Famous Quotes from each of his Plays

1592 March 3, Henry VI Part I is first printed 1594

1592-93 Henry VI, Part II first performed

1592-93 Henry VI, Part III first performed

1594 January 24 Titus Andronicus first performance

1594 December 28, Confirmed performance of The Comedy of Errors

1593-94 Taming of the Shrew first performed

1594-95 Two Gentlemen of Verona first performance

1594-95 Love's Labour's Lost first performed

1594-95 Romeo and Juliet first performance

1595-96 A Midsummer Night's Dream first performed

1596-97 The Merchant of Venice first performed

1597-98 Henry IV, Part I first performed

1597-98 Henry IV, Part II first performance

1598-99 Much Ado About Nothing first performed

1598-99 Henry V first performed

1599-00 As You Like It first performed

 1600-01 Julius Caesar first performance

1601 February 7 First Recorded production of Richard II

1600-01 Richard III first Recorded performance

1600-01 Hamlet first performed

1600-01 The Merry Wives of Windsor first performance

1602 February 2 First Recorded production of Twelfth Night

1602-03 All's Well That Ends Well first performed

1604 February 7 First Recorded production of Troilus and Cressida

1604 December 26 First performance of Measure for Measure

1604-05 Othello first performed

1606 December 26 First recorded performance of King Lear

1605-06 Macbeth first performance. First printed 1623

1606-07 Antony and Cleopatra first performed. First print 1623

1607-08 Coriolanus first performed

1607-08 Timon of Athens first performance

1608-09 Pericles first performed

1611 November 1 - First Recorded production of The Tempest

1611-12 Macbeth First recorded performance

1611-12 Cymbeline First recorded performance

1611-12 The Winter's Tale First recorded performance

1612-13 Henry VIII first performance

1612-13 The Two Noble Kinsmen. First printed 1634

2.2 Textual sources

In 1623, John Heminges and Henry Condell, two of Shakespeare's friends from the King's Men,
published the First Folio, a collected edition of Shakespeare's plays. It contained 36 texts, including 18 printed for
the first time. Many of the plays had already appeared in quarto versionsflimsy books made from sheets of
paper folded twice to make four leaves. No evidence suggests that Shakespeare approved these editions, which
the First Folio describes as "stol'n and surreptitious copies".Alfred Pollard termed some of them "bad quartos"
because of their adapted, paraphrased or garbled texts, which may in places have been reconstructed from
memory. Where several versions of a play survive, each differs from the other. The differences may stem from
copying or printing errors, from notes by actors or audience members, or from Shakespeare's own papers.[116] In
some cases, for example Hamlet, Troilus and Cressida and Othello, Shakespeare could have revised the texts
between the quarto and folio editions. In the case of King Lear, however, while most modern additions do conflate
them, the 1623 folio version is so different from the 1608 quarto, that the Oxford Shakespeare prints them both,
arguing that they cannot be conflated without confusion.
3. Poems

3.1 Shakespeares sonnets

Shakespeare's sonnets are 154 poems in sonnet form written by William Shakespeare, dealing with
themes such as the passage of time, love, beauty and mortality. All but two of the poems were first published in a
1609 quarto entitled SHAKE-SPEARES SONNETS.: Never before imprinted. Sonnets 138 and 144 had
previously been published in a 1599 miscellany entitled The Passionate Pilgrim.
The quarto ends with "A Lover's Complaint", a narrative poem of 47 seven-line
stanzas written in rhyme royal.The first 17 sonnets, traditionally called
the procreation sonnets, are ostensibly written to a young man urging him to marry
and have children in order to immortalise his beauty by passing it to the next
generation.[1] Other sonnets express the speaker's love for a young man; brood
upon loneliness, death, and the transience of life; seem to criticise the young man
for preferring a rival poet; express ambiguous feelings for the speaker's mistress;
and pun on the poet's name. The final two sonnets are allegoricaltreatments of
Greek epigrams referring to the "little love-god" Cupid.

The publisher, Thomas Thorpe, entered the book in the Stationers' Register on 20
May 1609:

Tho. Thorpe. Entred for his copie under the handes of master Wilson and master Lownes Wardenes a booke
called Shakespeares sonnettes vjd.

Whether Thorpe used an authorized manuscript from Shakespeare or an unauthorized copy is unknown. George
Eld printed the quarto, and the run was divided between the booksellers William Aspley and John Wright.

Dedication

The sonnets include a dedication to one "Mr. W.H.". The identity of this person remains a mystery and has
provoked a great deal of speculation.

The dedication reads:

TO.THE.ONLIE.BEGETTER.OF.

THESE.INSUING.SONNETS.

Mr.W.H. ALL.HAPPINESSE.

AND.THAT.ETERNITIE.
 PROMISED.

BY.

OUR.EVER-LIVING.POET.

WISHETH.

THE.WELL-WISHING.

ADVENTURER.IN.

SETTING.

FORTH

Given its obliquity, since the 19th century the dedication has become, in Colin Burrow's words, a "dank pit in
which speculation wallows and founders". Don Foster concludes that the result of all the speculation has yielded
only two "facts," which themselves have been the object of much debate: First, that the form of address (Mr.)
suggests that W.H. was an untitled gentleman, and second, that W.H., whoever he was, is identified as "the only
begetter" of Shakespeare's Sonnets (whatever the word "begetter" is taken to mean).

The initials 'T.T.' are taken to refer to the publisher, Thomas Thorpe, though Thorpe usually signed prefatory
matter only if the author was out of the country or dead.Foster points out, however, that Thorpe's entire corpus of
such consists of only four dedications and three stationer's prefaces.That Thorpe signed the dedication rather
than the author is often read as evidence that he published the work without obtaining Shakespeare's permission.

The capital letters and periods following each word were probably intended to resemble an ancient
Roman lapidary inscription or monumental brass, thereby accentuating Shakespeare's declaration in Sonnet 55
that the work will confer immortality to the subjects of the work:

Not marble, nor the gilded monuments

Of princes shall outlive this pow'rful rhyme,

126 of Shakespeare's sonnets are addressed to a young man (often called the "Fair Youth"). Broadly
speaking, there are two branches of theories concerning the identity of Mr. W.H.: those that take him to be
identical to the youth, and those that assert him to be a separate person.

The following is a non-exhaustive list of contenders:

William Herbert (the Earl of Pembroke). Herbert is seen by many as the most likely candidate, since he was
also the dedicatee of the First Folio of Shakespeare's works. However the "obsequious" Thorpe would be unlikely
to have addressed a lord as "Mr".

Henry Wriothesley (the Earl of Southampton). Many have argued that 'W.H.' is Southampton's initials
reversed, and that he is a likely candidate as he was the dedicatee of Shakespeare's poems Venus &
Adonis and The Rape of Lucrece. Southampton was also known for his good looks, and has often been argued to
be the 'fair youth' of the sonnets. The reservations about "Mr." also apply here.

A simple printing error for Shakespeare's initials, 'W.S.' or 'W. Sh'. This was suggested by Bertrand Russell in
his memoirs, and also by Foster and by Jonathan Bate.Bate supports his point by reading 'onlie' as something like
'peerless', 'singular' and 'begetter' as 'maker', ie. 'writer'. Foster takes "onlie" to mean only one, which he argues
eliminates any particular subject of the poems, since they are addressed to more than one person. The phrase
'Our Ever-Living Poet', according to Foster, refers to God, not Shakespeare. 'Poet' comes from the Greek 'poetes'
which means 'maker', a fact remarked upon in various contemporary texts; also, in Elizabethan English the word
'maker' was used to mean 'poet'. These researcher believe the phrase 'our ever-living poet' might easily have
been taken to mean 'our immortal maker' (God). The 'eternity' promised us by our immortal maker would then be
the eternal life that is promised us by God, and the dedication would conform with the standard formula of the
time, according to which one person wished another "happiness [in this life] and eternal bliss [in heaven]".
Shakespeare himself, on this reading, is 'Mr. W. [S]H.' the 'onlie begetter', i.e., the sole author, of the sonnets, and
the dedication is advertising the authenticity of the poems.

William Hall, a printer who had worked with Thorpe on other publications. According to this theory, the
dedication is simply Thorpe's tribute to his colleague and has nothing to do with Shakespeare. This theory,
originated by Sir Sidney Lee in his A Life of William Shakespeare (1898), was continued by Colonel B.R. Ward in
his The Mystery of Mr. W.H. (1923), and has been endorsed recently by Brian Vickers, who notes Thorpe uses
such 'visual puns' elsewhere.Supporters of this theory point out that "ALL" following "MR. W. H." spells "MR. W.
HALL" with the deletion of a period. Using his initials W.H., Hall had edited a collection of the poems of Robert
Southwell that was printed by George Eld, the same printer for the 1609 Sonnets. There is also documentary
evidence of one William Hall of Hackney who signed himself 'WH' three years earlier, but it is uncertain if this was
the printer.

Sir William Harvey, Southampton's stepfather. This theory assumes that the fair youth and Mr. W.H. are
separate people, and that Southampton is the fair youth. Harvey would be the "begetter" of the sonnets in the
sense that it would be he who provided them to the publisher, after the death of Southampton's mother
removed an obstacle to publication. The reservations about the use of "Mr" did not apply in the case of
a knight.

William Himself (i.e., Shakespeare). This theory was proposed by the German scholar D. Barnstorff, but has
found no support.

William Haughton, a contemporary dramatist.[13][14]

William Hart, Shakespeare's nephew and male heir. Proposed by Richard Farmer, but Hart was nine years of
age at the time of publication, and this suggestion is regarded as unlikely.

William Hatcliffe of Lincolnshire, proposed by Leslie Hotson in 1964.

Who He. In his 2002 Oxford Shakespeare edition of the sonnets, Colin Burrow argues that the dedication is
deliberately mysterious and ambiguous, possibly standing for "Who He", a conceit also used in a
contemporary pamphlet. He suggests that it might have been created by Thorpe simply to encourage
speculation and discussion (and hence, sales of the text).

Willie Hughes. The 18th-century scholar Thomas Tyrwhitt first proposed the theory that the Mr. W.H. (and the
Fair Youth) was one "William Hughes", based on presumed puns on the name in the sonnets. The argument
was repeated in Edmund Malone's 1790 edition of the sonnets. The most famous exposition of the theory is
in Oscar Wilde's short story "The Portrait of Mr. W. H.", in which Wilde, or rather the story's narrator, describes
 the puns on "will" and "hues" in the sonnets, (notably Sonnet 20 among others), and argues that they were
written to a seductive young actor named Willie Hughes who played female roles in Shakespeare's plays.
There is no evidence for the existence of any such person.

Structure
The sonnets are almost all constructed from three four-line stanzas (called quatrains) and a
final couplet composed in iambic pentameter (a meter used extensively in Shakespeare's plays) with
the rhymescheme abab cdcd efef gg (this form is now known as the Shakespearean sonnet). The only exceptions
are Sonnets 99, 126, and 145. Number 99 has fifteen lines. Number 126 consists of six couplets, and two blank
lines marked with italic brackets; 145 is in iambic tetrameters, not pentameters. Often, the beginning of the third
quatrain marks the volta ("turn"), or the line in which the mood of the poem shifts, and the poet expresses a
revelation or epiphany.There is another variation on the standard English structure, found for example in sonnet
29. The normal rhyme scheme is changed by repeating the b of quatrain one in quatrain three where the f should
be. This leaves the sonnet distinct between both Shakespearean and Spenserian styles.

When in disgrace with fortune and mens eyes

I all alone beweep my outcast state,

And trouble deaf heaven with my bootless cries,
And look upon myself, and curse my fate,
Wishing me like to one more rich in hope,
Featured like him, like him with friends possessed,
Desiring this mans art, and that mans scope,
With what I most enjoy contented least;
Yet in these thoughts myself almost despising,
Haply I think on thee,and then my state,
Like to the lark at break of day arising
From sullen earth, sings hymns at heavens gate;
For thy sweet love remembered such wealth brings
That then I scorn to change my state with kings.

Whether the author intended to step over the boundaries of the standard rhyme scheme will always be in
question. Some, like Sir Denis Bray, find the repetition of the words and rhymes to be a "serious technical
blemish", while others, like Kenneth Muir, think "the double use of 'state' as a rhyme may be justified, in order to
bring out the stark contrast between the Poet's apparently outcast state and the state of joy described in the third
quatrain."Given that this is the only sonnet in the collection that follows this pattern, it is hard to say if it was
purposely done. But most of the poets at the time were well educated; "schooled to be sensitive to variations in
sounds and word order that strike us today as remarkably, perhaps even excessively, subtle." Shakespeare must
have been well aware of this subtle change to the firm structure of the English sonnets.
Characters

Some scholars of the sonnets refer to these characters as the Fair Youth, the Rival Poet, and the Dark
Lady, and claim that the speaker expresses admiration for the Fair Youth's beauty, and later has an affair with the
Dark Lady.It is not known whether the poems and their characters are fiction or autobiographical. If they are
autobiographical, the identities of the characters are open to debate. Various scholars, most notably A. L. Rowse,
have attempted to identify the characters with historical individuals

Fair Youth

The Fair Youth is an unnamed young man to whom sonnets 1-126 are addressed. The
poet writes of the young man in romantic and loving language, a fact which has led several
commentators to suggest a homosexual relationship between them, while others read it
as platonic love, or even as the love of a father for his son.

The earliest poems in the collection do not imply a close personal relationship; instead, they
recommend the benefits of marriage and children. With the famous sonnet 18 ("Shall I compare thee
to a summer's day") the tone changes dramatically towards romantic intimacy. Sonnet 20 explicitly laments that
the young man is not a woman. Most of the subsequent sonnets describe the ups and downs of the relationship,
culminating with an affair between the poet and the Dark Lady. The relationship seems to end when the Fair Youth
succumbs to the Lady's charms.

There have been many attempts to identify the Friend. Shakespeare's one-time patron, Henry Wriothesley, 3rd
Earl of Southampton is the most commonly suggested candidate, although Shakespeare's later patron, William
Herbert, 3rd Earl of Pembroke, has recently become popular. Both claims have much to do with the dedication of
the sonnets to 'Mr. W.H.', "the only begetter of these ensuing sonnets": the initials could apply to either Earl.
However, while Shakespeare's language often seems to imply that the 'friend' is of higher social status than
himself, this may not be the case. The apparent references to the poet's inferiority may simply be part of the
rhetoric of romantic submission. An alternative theory, most famously espoused by Oscar Wilde's short story 'The
Portrait of Mr. W.H.' notes a series of puns that may suggest the sonnets are written to a boy actor called William
Hughes; however, Wilde's story acknowledges that there is no evidence for such a person's existence. Samuel
Butler believed that the friend was a seaman, and recently Joseph Pequigney ('Such Is My love') an unknown
commoner.

The Dark Lady

The Dark Lady sequence (sonnets 127152), distinguishes itself from the Fair Youth sequence by being
overtly sexual in its passion. Among these, Sonnet 151 has been characterized as "bawdy" and is used to
illustrate the difference between the spiritual love for the Fair Youth and the sexual love for the Dark Lady. The
distinction is commonly made in the introduction to modern editions of the sonnets. [22] The Dark Lady is so called
because the poems make it clear that she has black hair and dusky skin. As with the Fair Youth, there have been
many attempts to identify her with a real historical individual. Mary Fitton, Emilia Lanier and others have been
suggested.

William Wordsworth was unimpressed by these sonnets. He wrote that:

These sonnets, beginning at 127, to his Mistress, are worse than a puzzle-peg. They are abominably harsh,
obscure & worthless. The others are for the most part much better, have many fine lines, very fine lines &
passages. They are also in many places warm with passion. Their chief faults, and heavy ones they are, are
sameness, tediousness, quaintness, & elaborate obscurity.

The Rival Poet

The Rival Poet's identity has always remained a mystery, though there is a general consensus that the two
most likely candidates are Christopher Marlowe and George Chapman. However, there is no hard
evidence that the character had a real-life counterpart. The Poet sees the Rival as competition for fame
and patronage. The sonnets most commonly identified as The Rival Poet group exist within the Fair Youth
series in sonnets 7886.
Themes
One interpretation is that Shakespeare's sonnets are in part a pastiche or parody of the three-
centuries-old tradition of Petrarchan love sonnets; Shakespeare consciously inverts conventional
gender roles as delineated in Petrarchan sonnets to create a more complex and potentially
troubling depiction of human love. He also violated many sonnet rules, which had been strictly
obeyed by his fellow poets: he plays with gender roles (20), he speaks on human evils that do not
have to do with love (66), he comments on political events (124), he makes fun of love (128), he
speaks openly about sex (129), he parodies beauty (130), and even introduces witty pornography
(151)

Legacy
Coming as they do at the end of conventional Petrarchan sonneteering, Shakespeare's sonnets can also
be seen as a prototype, or even the beginning, of a new kind of "modern" love poetry. During the eighteenth
century, their reputation in England was relatively low; as late as 1805, The Critical Review could still credit John
Milton with the perfection of the English sonnet. As part of the renewed interest in Shakespeare's original work
that accompanied Romanticism, the sonnets rose steadily in reputation during the nineteenth century.The cross-
cultural importance and influence of the sonnets is demonstrated by the large number of translations that have
been made of them. In the German-speaking countries alone, there have been 70 complete translations since
1784. There is no major written language into which the sonnets have not been translated, including
Latin,Japanese, Turkish,Esperanto,[and Klingon.

Modern editions

Like all of Shakespeare's work, the sonnets have been reprinted in many editions.

Martin Seymour-Smith (1963) Shakespeare's Sonnets (Oxford, Heinemann Educational)

Stephen Booth (1977) Shakespeare's Sonnets (Yale)
 W G Ingram and Theodore Redpath (1978) Shakespeare's Sonnets, 2nd Edition
John Kerrigan (1986) The Sonnets and a Lover's Complaint (Penguin)
G. Blakemore Evans (1996) The Sonnets (Cambridge UP)
Katherine Duncan-Jones (1997) Shakespeare's Sonnets (Arden Edition, Third Series)
Helen Vendler (1997) The Art of Shakespeare's Sonnets, Harvard University Press

4. Style

Shakespeare's first plays were written in the conventional style of the day. He wrote them in a stylised
language that does not always spring naturally from the needs of the characters or the drama. [1] The poetry
depends on extended, sometimes elaborate metaphors and conceits, and the language is often rhetorical
written for actors to declaim rather than speak. For example, the grand speeches in Titus Andronicus, in the view
of some critics, often hold up the action; meanwhile, the verse in Two Gentlemen of Verona has been described
as stilted.[2]

Soon, however, Shakespeare began to adapt the traditional styles to his own purposes. The
opening soliloquy of Richard III has its roots in the self-declaration of Vice in medieval drama. At the same time,
Richards vivid self-awareness looks forward to the soliloquies of Shakespeare's mature plays. No single play
marks a change from the traditional to the freer style. Shakespeare combined the two throughout his career,
with Romeo and Juliet perhaps the best example of the mixing of the styles. By the time of Romeo and
Juliet, Richard II, and A Midsummer Night's Dream in the mid-1590s, Shakespeare had begun to write a more
natural poetry. He increasingly tuned his metaphors and images to the needs of the drama itself.

Shakespeare's standard poetic form was blank verse, composed in iambic pentameter. In practice, this
meant that his verse was usually unrhymed and consisted of ten syllables to a line, spoken with a stress on every
second syllable. The blank verse of his early plays is quite different from that of his later ones. It is often beautiful,
but its sentences tend to start, pause, and finish at the end of lines, with the risk of monotony. Once Shakespeare
mastered traditional blank verse, he began to interrupt and vary its flow. This technique releases the new power
and flexibility of the poetry in plays such as Julius Caesar and Hamlet. Shakespeare uses it, for example, to
convey the turmoil in Hamlet's mind:

Sir, in my heart there was a kind of fighting

That would not let me sleep. Methought I lay
Worse than the mutines in the bilboes. Rashly
And prais'd be rashness for itlet us know
Our indiscretion sometimes serves us well...

After Hamlet, Shakespeare varied his poetic style further,

particularly in the more emotional passages of the late tragedies. The literary critic A. C. Bradley described this
style as "more concentrated, rapid, varied, and, in construction, less regular, not seldom twisted or elliptical". In
the last phase of his career, Shakespeare adopted many techniques to achieve these effects. These included run-
on lines, irregular pauses and stops, and extreme variations in sentence structure and length.In Macbeth, for
example, the language darts from one unrelated metaphor or simile to another: "was the hope drunk/ Wherein you
dressed yourself?" (1.7.3538); "...pity, like a naked new-born babe/ Striding the blast, or heaven's cherubim,
hors'd/ Upon the sightless couriers of the air..." (1.7.2125). The listener is challenged to complete the sense.The
late romances, with their shifts in time and surprising turns of plot, inspired a last poetic style in which long and
short sentences are set against one another, clauses are piled up, subject and object are reversed, and words are
omitted, creating an effect of spontaneity.

Shakespeare's poetic genius was allied with a practical sense of the theatre.Like all playwrights of the time,
Shakespeare dramatised stories from sources such as Petrarch and Holinshed.He reshaped each plot to create
several centres of interest and show as many sides of a narrative to the audience as possible. This strength of
design ensures that a Shakespeare play can survive translation, cutting and wide interpretation without loss to its
core drama.As Shakespeares mastery grew, he gave his characters clearer and more varied motivations and
distinctive patterns of speech. He preserved aspects of his earlier style in the later plays, however. In his late
romances, he deliberately returned to a more artificial style, which emphasised the illusion of theatre.
 5. Shakespeares influence

William Shakespeare's influence extends from theatre to literature to present day movies and to
the English language itself. Widely regarded as the greatest writerof the English language and the world's pre-
eminent dramatist, Shakespeare transformed English theatre by expanding expectations about what could be
accomplished through characterization, plot, language and genre. Shakespeare's writings have also influenced a
large number of notable novelists and poets over the years, including Herman Melville and Charles
Dickens. Finally, Shakespeare is the second most quoted writer in the history of the English-speaking world after
the various writers of the Bible, and many of his quotations and neologisms have passed into everyday usage in
English and other languages.

The use of English among scholars, lawyers, public officials and other authors of public written
documents rose under the primary influence of the printing press. Until the end of the fifteenth century,
most oral communication was conducted in English, whereas most written communication was in Latin].
The mass production and widespread distribution of books tipped the scales in favour of the vernacular.
As more people began to read, writers noticed that English had become a practical means of reaching the
public. A rise of nationalism also contributed to the rise of the vernacular. As England ascended as a force
in European politics, first with Henry VIII and then with Elizabeth I, educators and writers began to
associate the English language with English values and national pride. A need to change the structure
and vocabulary of the language began to arise.
Changes in English at the time
Early Modern English asa literary medium was unfixed in structure and vocabulary in comparison
to Greek and Latin, and was in a constant state of flux. WhenWilliam Shakespeare began writing his
plays, the English language was rapidly absorbing words from other languages due to wars, exploration,
diplomacy and colonization. By the age of Elizabeth, English had become widely used with the
expansion of philosophy, theology and physical sciences, but many writers lacked the vocabulary to
express such ideas. To accommodate, writers such as Edmund Spenser, Sir Philip Sidney, Christopher
Marlowe and William Shakespeare expressed new ideas and distinctions by inventing, borrowing or
adopting a word or a phrase from another language, known as neologizing. Scholars estimate that,
between the years 1500 and 1659, nouns, verbs and modifiers of Latin, Greek and modern Romance
languages added 30,000 new words to the English language
Influence on the English language

The influence of Shakespeare on the English language, both spoken and written, has been debated and
opinions have varied over the centuries.

Shakespeares contribution to the expansion of the English language was commented on as early as 1598,
when commentator Francis Meres, applauding English literature in relation to the classics, placed Shakespeare
among the writers who had dignified the language. Later in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, critics and
scholars began to doubt whether Shakespeare had a significant effect on the expansion of English vocabulary.
This is mainly based on the neoclassical image of him as a poor Latinist. In the early twentieth century, there was
an overreaction to this, so that one critic credited William Shakespeare with having coined nearly 10,000 words,
though some critics wonder how his audience could have understood his plays if they were full of words of which
nobody had ever heard.
Influence on literature
Shakespeare is cited as an influence on a large number of writers in the following centuries, including
major novelists such as Herman Melville, Charles Dickens, Thomas Hardy[12] and William Faulkner. Examples of
this influence include the large number of Shakespearean quotations throughout Dickens' writings and the fact
that at least 25 of Dickens' titles are drawn from Shakespeare, while Melville frequently used Shakespearean
devices, including formal stage directions and extendedsoliloquies, in Moby-Dick. In fact, Shakespeare so
influenced Melville that the novel's main antagonist, Captain Ahab, is a classic Shakespearean tragic figure, "a
great man brought down by his faults." Shakespeare has also influenced a number of English poets,
especially Romantic poets such as Samuel Taylor Coleridge who were obsessed with self-consciousness, a
modern theme Shakespeare anticipated in plays such as Hamlet. Shakespeare's writings were so influential to
English poetry of the 1800s that critic George Steiner has called all English poetic dramas from Coleridge
to Tennyson "feeble variations on Shakespearean themes."

Influence on the English language

Shakespeare's writings greatly influenced the entire English language. Prior to and during Shakespeare's
time, the grammar and rules of English were not fixed. But once Shakespeare's plays became popular in the late
seventeenth and eighteenth century, they helped contribute to the standardization of the English language, with
many Shakespearean words and phrases becoming embedded in the English language, particularly through
projects such as Samuel Johnson's A Dictionary of the English Language which quoted Shakespeare more than
any other writer. He expanded the scope of English literature by introducing new words and phrases,
experimenting with blank verse, and also introducing new poetic and grammatical structures.

Pre-shakesperian English

Shakespeare wrote under the influence of writers such as Chaucer, Spenser and Sidney. It is also
important to note the setting of Shakespeare's language. In 449, the Germanic tribes -
the Angles, Saxons andJutes - had moved to Britain to side with the Celts in order to help them defeat their
northern neighbors. After their victory, however, the Germanic tribes gradually pushed the Celts into what became
Wales and Cornwall. The tribes introduced Anglo-Saxon, more commonly known as Old English language (Mario
Pei). Anglo-Saxon survived despite the Norman invasion of 1066, which introduced French to England and
strengthened Latin's existing power. These events marked the beginning of the Middle English period. Around
1204, bilingualism developed amongst "Norman officials, supervisors, [and] bilingual children [resulting from]
French and English marriages".English was, however, still not in common use, at least in matters of the state and
clergy. King John's death indicated the end of Norman rule. The decision of the Norman proprietors and Edward
I's (Henry III's son) conquest of Wales all contributed to increased usage of the English language. French/Norman
cultural supremacy in England waned. The increase in the use of English resulted in the "smoothing out of
dialectal differences [and] beginning of standard English based on London dialect".Nevertheless, French
remained the official language until around the 14th century. It was not until 1509, however, that English was
recognized as the official language of England. Until 1583, the rhetoric of the English language was deeply
indebted to Chaucer. Otherwise, given the relative lack of written records, "the innovation of the language was
uncertain".The late 15th and early 16th century marks the approximate shift from Middle English to Early Modern
English, the language of the Renaissance. "Before the arrival of Shakespeare to London, there was little hope for
the future of English but by 1613, when Shakespeare's last work was written, the literature of modern English was
already rich in varied achievements, self confident and mature".

Vocabulary

Among Shakespeare's greatest contributions to the English language must be the introduction of new
vocabulary and phrases which have enriched the language making it more colorful and expressive. Some
estimates at the number of words coined by Shakespeare number in the several thousands. However Warren
King clarifies by saying that, "In all of his work - the plays, the sonnets and the narrative poems - Shakespeare
uses 17,677 words: Of those, 1,700 were first used by Shakespeare." He is also very known for borrowing from
the classical literature and foreign languages. He created these words by, "changing nouns into verbs, changing
verbs into adjectives, connecting words never before used together, adding prefixes and suffixes, and devising
words wholly original." Many of Shakespeare's original phrases are still used in conversation and language today.
These include, but are not limited to; "seen better days, full circle, a sorry sight," and "strange
bedfellows" Shakespeare's effect on vocabulary is rather astounding when considering how much language has
changed since his lifetime.

Shakespeare helped to further develop style and structure to an otherwise loose, spontaneous language.
The Elizabethan era language was written the same way it was spoken. The naturalness gave force and freedom
since there was no formalized prescriptive grammar binding the expression. While lack of prescribed grammatical
rules introduced vagueness in literature, it also expressed feelings with profound vividness and emotion which
created, "freedom of expression" and "vividness of presentment". It was a language which expressed feelings
explicitly. Shakespeare's gift involved using the exuberance of the language anddecasyllabic structure in prose
and poetry of his plays to reach the masses and the result was "a constant two way exchange between learned
and the popular, together producing the unique combination of racy tang and the majestic stateliness that informs
the language of Shakespeare".
While it is true that Shakespeare created many new words (the Oxford English Dictionary records over 2000), an
article in National Geographic points out the findings of historian Jonathan Hope who wrote in "Shakespeare's
'Native English'" that "the Victorian scholars who read texts for the first edition of the OED paid special attention to
Shakespeare: his texts were read more thoroughly, and cited more often, so he is often credited with the first use
of words, or senses of words, which can, in fact, be found in other writers."

Blank verse

Shakespeare's first plays were experimental as he was still learning from his own mistakes. It was a long
journey from Titus Andronicus and King Henry VI to The Tempest. Gradually his language followed the "natural
process of artistic growth, to find its adequate projection in dramatic form". As he continued experimenting, his
style of writing found many manifestations in plays. The dialogues in his plays were written in verse form and
followed a decasyllabic rule. In Titus Andronicus, decasyllables have been used throughout. "There is
considerable pause; and though the inflexibility of the line sound is little affected by it, there is a certain running
over of sense". His work is still experimental in Titus Andronicus. However, in Love's Labour's Lost and The
Comedy of Errors, there is "perfect metre-abundance of rime [rhyme], plenty of prose, arrangement in stanza".
After these two comedies, he kept experimenting until he reached a maturity of style. "Shakespeare's
experimental use of trend and style, as well as the achieved development of his blank verses, are all evidences of
his creative invention and influences". Through experimentation of tri-syllabic substitution and decasyllabic rule he
developed the blank verse to perfection and introduced a new style.

"Shakespeare's blank verse is one of the most important of all his influences on the way the English language
was written". He used the blank verse throughout in his writing career experimenting and perfecting it. The free
speech rhythm gave Shakespeare more freedom for experimentation. "Adaptation of free speech rhythm to the
fixed blank-verse framework is an outstanding feature of Shakespeare's poetry".The striking choice of words in
common place blank verse influenced "the run of the verse itself, expanding into images which eventually seem to
bear significant repetition, and to form, with the presentation of character and action correspondingly developed, a
more subtle and suggestive unity". Expressing emotions and situations in form of a verse gave a natural flow to
language with an added sense of flexibility and spontaneity.

Poetry

He introduced in poetry two main factors - "verbal immediacy and the moulding of stress to the
movement of living emotion".Shakespeare's words reflected passage of time with "fresh, concrete vividness"
giving the reader an idea of the time frame. His remarkable capacity to analyze and express emotions in simple
words was noteworthy:

"When my love swears that she is made of truth,

I do believe her, though I know she lies-"

(Sonnet CXXXVIII)

In the sonnet above, he has expressed in very simple words "complex and even contradictory attitudes to a single
emotion".
 6.Critical reputation
"He was not of an age, but for all time."
Ben Jonson

Shakespeare was never revered in his lifetime, but he received his share of praise. In 1598, the
cleric and author Francis Meres singled him out from a group of English writers as "the most excellent" in both
comedy and tragedy. And the authors of the Parnassus plays at St John's College, Cambridge, numbered him
with Chaucer, Gower and Spenser. In theFirst Folio, Ben Jonson called Shakespeare the "Soul of the age, the
applause, delight, the wonder of our stage", though he had remarked elsewhere that "Shakespeare wanted art".
He was also recognised highly by James I by making them his 'Kings Men'.

Between the Restoration of the monarchy in 1660 and the end of the 17th
century, classical ideas were in vogue. As a result, critics of the time mostly rated
Shakespeare below John Fletcher and Ben Jonson. Thomas Rymer, for example,
condemned Shakespeare for mixing the comic with the tragic. Nevertheless, poet and
critic John Dryden rated Shakespeare highly, saying of Jonson, "I admire him, but I
love Shakespeare".For several decades, Rymer's view held sway; but during the
18th century, critics began to respond to Shakespeare on his own terms and
acclaim what they termed his natural genius. A series of scholarly editions of his work, notably those of Samuel
Johnson in 1765 and Edmond Malone in 1790, added to his growing reputation. By 1800, he was firmly enshrined
as the national poet. In the 18th and 19th centuries, his reputation also spread abroad. Among those who
championed him were the writers Voltaire, Goethe, Stendhal and Victor Hugo.

During the Romantic era, Shakespeare was praised by the poet and literary philosopher Samuel Taylor
Coleridge; and the critic August Wilhelm Schlegel translated his plays in the spirit of German Romanticism. In the
19th century, critical admiration for Shakespeare's genius often bordered on adulation. "That King Shakespeare,"
the essayist Thomas Carlyle wrote in 1840, "does not he shine, in crowned sovereignty, over us all, as the
noblest, gentlest, yet strongest of rallying signs; indestructible".The Victorians produced his plays as lavish
spectacles on a grand scale. The playwright and criticGeorge Bernard Shaw mocked the cult of Shakespeare
worship as "bardolatry". He claimed that the new naturalism of Ibsen's plays had made Shakespeare obsolete.

The modernist revolution in the arts during the early 20th century, far from discarding Shakespeare, eagerly
enlisted his work in the service of the avant-garde. The Expressionists in Germany and the Futurists in Moscow
mounted productions of his plays. Marxist playwright and director Bertolt Brecht devised an epic theatre under the
influence of Shakespeare. The poet and critic T. S. Eliot argued against Shaw that Shakespeare's "primitiveness"
in fact made him truly modern. Eliot, along with G. Wilson Knight and the school of New Criticism, led a
movement towards a closer reading of Shakespeare's imagery. In the 1950s, a wave of new critical approaches
replaced modernism and paved the way for "post-modern" studies of Shakespeare. By the eighties, Shakespeare
studies were open to movements such asstructuralism, feminism, New Historicism, African American studies,
and queer studies.

7.Speculation about Shakespeare

7.1. Shakespeares autorship

The Shakespeare authorship question is the argument that someone other than William
Shakespeare of Stratford-upon-Avon wrote the works traditionally attributed to him. Proponents say that
Shakespeare of Stratford was a front to shield the identity of the real author or authors, who for some reason did
not want or could not accept public credit.Although the idea has attracted much public interest, all but a few
Shakespeare scholars and literary historians consider it a fringe belief, and for the most part disregard it except to
rebut or disparage the claims.

Shakespeare's authorship was first questioned in the middle of the 19th century, when adulation of
Shakespeare as the greatest writer of all time had become widespread. Shakespeare's biography, particularly his
humble origins and obscure life, seemed incompatible with his poetic eminence and his reputation for
genius,arousing suspicion that Shakespeare might not have written the works attributed to him.The controversy
has since spawned a vast body of literature, and more than 70 authorship candidates have been
proposed,including Francis Bacon, the 6th Earl of Derby, Christopher Marlowe, and the 17th Earl of Oxford.

Supporters of alternative candidates argue that theirs is the more plausible author, and that William
Shakespeare lacked the education, aristocratic sensibility, or familiarity with the royal court that they say is
apparent in the works. Those Shakespeare scholars who have responded to such claims hold that biographical
interpretations of literature are unreliable in attributing authorship, and that the convergence of documentary
evidence for Shakespeare's authorshiptitle pages, testimony by other contemporary poets and historians, and
official recordsis the same as that for any other authorial attribution of the time. [12] No such supporting
evidence exists for any other candidate, and Shakespeare's authorship was not questioned during his lifetime or
for centuries after his death.

Despite the scholarly consensus,a relatively small but highly visible and diverse assortment of supporters,
including some prominent public figures, have questioned the conventional attribution. They campaign for public
acceptance of the authorship question as a legitimate field of academic inquiry and to promote one or another of
the various authorship candidates.

7.2 Shakespeares religion

Knowledge of William Shakespeare's religion is important in understanding the man and his works
because of the wealth of biblical and liturgical allusions, both Protestantand Catholic, in his writings and the
hidden references to contemporary religious tensions that are claimed to be found in the plays. The topic is the
subject of intense scholarly debate. There is no direct evidence of William Shakespeare's religious affiliation,
however over the years there have been many speculations about the personal religious beliefs that he may have
held. These speculations are based on circumstantial evidence from historical records and on analysis of his
published work. Some evidence suggests that Shakespeare's family had Catholic sympathies and that he himself
was a secret Catholic; although there is disagreement over whether he in fact was so, many scholars maintain the
former consensus position that he was a member of the established Anglican Church.

Due to the paucity of direct evidence, general agreement on the matter has not yet been reached. As one analysis
of the subject puts it, "One cannot quite speak of a consensus among Shakespeare scholars on this point, though
the reluctance of some to admit the possibility of Catholicism in Shakespeare's family is becoming harder to
maintain."

In 1559, five years before Shakespeare's birth, the Elizabethan Religious Settlement finally severed
the Church of England from the Papacy in Rome. In the ensuing years, extreme pressure was placed on
England's Catholics to accept the reforms of the Church of England, and recusancy laws made illegal not only the
Roman Catholic Mass, but also any service which is not found in the Book of Common Prayer.In Shakespeare's
lifetime there was a substantial and widespread quiet resistance to the newly imposed reforms.Some scholars,
using both historical and literary evidence, have argued that Shakespeare was one of these recusants.

Some scholars claim that there is evidence that members of Shakespeare's family were recusant Catholics. The
strongest evidence is a tract professing secret Catholicism signed by John Shakespeare, father of the poet. The
tract was found in the 18th century in the rafters of a house which had once been John Shakespeare's, and was
seen and described by the reputable scholar Edmond Malone. Malone later changed his mind and declared that
he thought the tract was a forgery.Although the tract document itself has been lost, 20th century evidence has
linked Malone's reported wording of the tract definitively to a testament written by Charles Borromeo and
circulated in England by Edmund Campion, copies of which still exist in Italian and English. John Shakespeare
was also listed as one who did not attend church services, but this was "for feare of processe for Debtte",
according to the commissioners, not because he was a recusant.

Shakespeare's mother, Mary Arden, was a member of a conspicuous and determinedly Catholic family
in Warwickshire.In 1606, his daughter Susanna was listed as one of the residents of Stratford who failed to
take Holy Communion at Easter, which may suggest Catholic sympathies. It may, however, also be a sign
of Puritan sympathies; Susannah's sister Judith was, according to some statements, of a Puritanical bent.

Shakespeares schooling

Four of the six schoolmasters at the grammar school during Shakespeare's youth, Kings New School in
Stratford, were Catholic sympathisers,and Simon Hunt, who was likely to have been one of Shakespeares
teachers, later became a Jesuit.Thomas Jenkins, who succeeded Hunt as teacher in the grammar school, was a
student of Edmund Campion at St. John's College, Oxford. Jenkins's successor at the grammar school in 1579,
John Cottam, was the brother of Jesuit priest Thomas Cottam. A fellow grammar school pupil with
Shakespeare, Robert Debdale, joined the Jesuits at Douai and was later executed in England for Catholic
proselytising along with Thomas Cottam.

Lost years

John Aubrey reported that Shakespeare had been a country schoolmaster, a tale augmented in the 20th
century with the theory that his employer might have been Alexander Hoghton of Lancashire, a prominent
Catholic landowner who left money in his will to a certain "William Shakeshafte", referencing theatrical costumes
and paraphernalia.Shakespeare's grandfather Richard had also once used the name Shakeshafte. Peter
Ackroyd adds that study of the marginal notes in the Hoghton family copy of Edward Hall's Chronicles, an
important source for Shakespeare's early histories, shows that they were in "probability" in Shakespeare's writing.

Catholic sympathies

Possible catholic wedding

The writer's marriage to Anne Hathaway in 1582 may have been officiated, amongst other candidates, by
John Frith in the town of Temple Grafton a few miles from Stratford. In 1586 the crown named Frith, who
maintained the appearance of Protestantism, as a Catholic priest. Some surmise Shakespeare wed in Temple
Grafton rather than the Protestant Church in Stratford in order for his wedding to be performed as a Catholic
sacrament. He was thought to have rushed his marriage ceremony, as Anne was three months pregnant.

Historical sources

The historian John Speed asserted Shakespeare's links with Catholicism in 1611, accusing him of
satirizing the perceived Protestant martyr John Oldcastle (first portrayed by Shakespeare under his own name,
then the alias Falstaff after complaints from his descendants) and linking the playwright with Jesuit Robert
Persons, describing them together as "the Papist and his poet". Joseph Pearce, in The Quest for Shakespeare,
characterises Speed's "astonishing attack" on Shakespeare as a manifestation of the general suspicion in which
the Puritans, of whom Speed was one, held playmakers. He explains that Speed was attacking Persons and
Shakespeare for demolishing the notion in Foxe's Book of Martyrs that Oldcastle was a Protestant hero. Speed
encompassed Shakespeare's Henry IV, Part 1in early performances of which a knight named Oldcastle played
a prominent partas well, for "falsifying the history of England", thus showing that Shakespeare held this view
in common with the Jesuits: as Pearce says "endeavoring to tar Shakespeare with the Jesuit brush".More simply,
the story of Prince Henry and his "dear friend" Oldcastle, whom he left to his fate after failing to persuade the
stubborn old knight to recant when the church had him arrested, appears in the contemporary accounts of the
period and was the historical basis for Shakespeare including the character in his play.

Archdeacon Richard Davies, a 17th century Anglican cleric wrote of Shakespeare: "He dyed a Papyst".
The Catholic Encyclopedia (1912) states that "Davies, an Anglican clergyman, could have had no conceivable
motive for misrepresenting the matter in these private notes and as he lived in the neighbouring county of
Gloucestershire he may be echoing a local tradition" but concludes that whilst Davies comment "is by no means
incredible but it would obviously be foolish to build too much upon an unverifiable tradition of this kind".

Pearce maintains that one of the most compelling pieces of evidence is Shakespeare's purchase of Blackfriars
Gatehouse, a place that had remained in Catholic hands since the time of the Reformation, was notorious for
Jesuit conspiracy, passageways and priest holes to hide priests, and for covert Catholic activity in
London.Shakespeare ensured that the tenant John Robinson remained in the house, and its use continued. The
same year that Robinson was named as Shakespeare's tenant, Robinson's brother entered the seminary at the
English College in Rome Schoenbaum, however, assigns a purely fiscal motive to the purchase: after examining
the complex financial arrangements surrounding the transaction he concludes, "an investment, pure and simple".

Textual evidence

An increasing number of scholars look to evidence from Shakespeares work, such as the placement
of young Hamlet as a student at Wittenberg while old Hamlets ghost is in purgatory, as suggestive of a Catholic
worldview, but these speculations can be contradictory: The University of Wittenberg was an intellectual centre of
the Protestant Reformation and the whole of Hamlet can be read as filled with "cryptic allusions to the Protestant
Reformation".Other indications have been detected in the sympathetic view of religious life expressed in the
phrase "thrice blessed",scholastic theology in The Phoenix and the Turtle, sympathetic allusions to English
Jesuit St. Edmund Campion that are claimed to exist in Twelfth Night and many other matters. More recently it
has been suggested that Shakespeare was simply playing upon an English Catholic tradition, rather than actually
being Catholic, and was utilizing the symbolic nature of Catholic ceremony to embellish his own
theatre.Schoenbaum suspects Catholic sympathies of some kind or another in Shakespeare and his family, but
considers the writer himself to be a less than pious person with essentially worldly motives:"...the artist takes
precedence over the votary". Literary scholar David Daniell arrives at a similar conclusion, but from the opposite
direction: as a good Protestant Shakespeare used many biblical allusions and quotations in his works, but only
because his audience, well versed in the Bible in English, would quickly take his meaning.

Greenblatt acknowledges the convention that the "equivocator" arriving at the gate of hell in the Porter's speech
in Macbeth is probably a reference to the Jesuit Father Henry Garnet who had been executed in 1606.[He argues,
however, that Shakespeare probably included the allusion for the sake of topicality, trusting that his audience
would have heard of Garnet's pamphlet on equivocation rather than any hidden sympathy for the man or his
cause indeed the portrait is not a sympathetic one. Shakespeare may have also been aware of the
"equivocation" concept which appeared as the subject of a 1583 tract by Queen Elizabeth's chief councillor Lord
Burghley, and the 1584 Doctrine of Equivocation by the Spanish prelate Martin Azpilcueta that was disseminated
across Europe and into England in the 1590s.

The literary scholar and Catholic priest Peter Milward and the writer Clare Asquith are among those who have
claimed that Catholic sympathies are detectable in his writing.Asquith claims that Shakespeare uses terms such
as "high" when referring to Catholic characters and "low" when referring to Protestants (the terms refer to
their altars) and "light" or "fair" to refer to Catholic and "dark" to refer to Protestant, a reference to certain clerical
garbs. Asquith also detects in Shakespeare's work the use of a simple code used by the Jesuit underground in
England which took the form of a mercantile terminology wherein priests were 'merchants' and souls were 'jewels',
those pursuing them were 'creditors', and the Tyburn gallows where the members of the underground died was
called 'the place of much trading'.The Jesuit underground used this code so their correspondences looked like
innocuous commercial letters, and Asquith claims that Shakespeare also used this code. However, these
particular claims have met with "damning" criticism.

Revision of older plays

Although Shakespeare commonly adapted existing tales, typically myths or works in another language,
Joseph Pearce notes that King John, King Lear and Hamlet were all works that had been done recently and in
English with an anti-Catholic bias, and that Shakespeare's version appear to be a refutation of the source
plays.Pearce believes otherwise he would not have "reinvented the wheel", revisiting recent English plays. Peter
Milward is among those who hold the view that Shakespeare engaged in rebuttal of recent English "anti-Papist"
works.On the other hand, Jonathan Bate describes the process of Leir's transformation into Lear as replacing the
"external trappings of Christianity" with a pagan setting. He adds that the devils plaguing "Poor Tom" in
Shakespeare's version have the same names as the evil spirits in a book by Samuel Harsnett, later Archbishop of
York, that denounces the "fake" Catholic practice of exorcism.
Inscriptions at the Venerable English College

The names Arthurus Stratfordus Wigomniensis and Gulielmus Clerkue Stratfordiensis are found within
ancient inscriptions at the Venerable English College, a seminary in Rome which has long trained Catholic clergy
serving in Britain. Scholars have speculated that these names might be related to Shakespeare, who is alleged to
have visited the city of Rome at one point during his life.

Protestantism

The Shakespeare editor and historian A. L. Rowse is firm in his assertion that Shakespeare was not a
Catholic: "He was an orthodox, confirming member of the Church into which he had been baptised, was brought
up and married, in which his children were reared and in whose arms he at length was buried".He identifies anti-
Catholic sentiment in Sonnet 124, taking "the fools of time" in the last lines of this sonnet "To this I witness call the
fools of time, which die for goodness who have lived for crime." to refer to the many Jesuits who were executed
for treason in the years 1594-5. John Klause of Hofstra University accepts that Shakespeare intended "the fools
of time" in the sonnet to represent executed Jesuits, but contends that the poet, by alluding to executed
Jesuit Robert Southwell's Epistle of Comfort and its glorification of martyrdom, sympathises with them. Klause
maintains that Southwell's influence is also identifiable in Titus Andronicus. A later assessment places Klause's
interpretation as "against most recent trends".[58]Notwithstanding Pearce's identification (above) of
Shakespeare's King John as a reworking of The Troublesome Reign of King John, made to refute its anti-Catholic
bias, strong examples of Protestant sympathies, such as the denouncement of the Pope as an "unworthy and
ridiculous...Italian priest" with "usurped authority", remain in the text. Perhaps Shakespeare's most direct
reference in the plays comes at the birth of Queen Elizabeth in Henry VIII, during whose reign, as the architect of
the reformation Archbishop Cranmer predicts, "God shall be truly known".
Atheism

The fact of Shakespeares Christianity is in itself not universally accepted. William Birch of Oxford
University was, in 1848, probably the first to air the notion of atheism, based solely on his interpretation of
sentiments expressed in the works, but the theory was dismissed as a "rare tissue of perverted ingenuity" by a
contemporary, the textual editor H. H. Furness. The 1914 edition of the Catholic Encyclopediaquestioned not only
Shakespeare's Catholicism, but whether "[he] was not infected with the atheism, which...was rampant in the more
cultured society of the Elizabethan age." Some evidence in support of Shakespeare's supposed atheism, and
then only in the form of "evidence of absence", exists in the discovery by John Payne Collier, a notorious forger of
historical documents, who examined the records of St Saviour's, Southwark, and found that Shakespeare, alone
among his fellow Globe actors, was not shown as a churchgoer. The obvious conclusion here is that of recusancy,
but instead it is sometimes cited as evidence of atheism.

7.3 Sexuality

The sexuality of William Shakespeare has been the subject of recurring debate. It is known that he
married Anne Hathaway and they had three children. In addition there has been speculation that he had affairs
with other women, or may have had an erotic interest in men. However, no reliable direct evidence exists to
support the view that he was interested in men; all theories along these lines rely on circumstantial evidence and
inference from an analysis of his sonnets. The suggestion that Shakespeare had multiple female lovers has been
given a good deal of scholarly and public interest, while the possibility of a non-heterosexual Shakespeare has
historically been controversial given his iconic status and the stigma towards homosexuality in Western countries.

At the age of 18, Shakespeare married the 26-year-old Anne Hathaway. The consistory court of the Diocese of
Worcester issued a marriage licence on 27 November 1582. Two of Hathaway's neighbours posted bonds the
next day as surety that there were no impediments to the marriage. The couple may have arranged the ceremony
in some haste, since the Worcester chancellor allowed the marriage banns to be read once instead of the usual
three times. Hathaway's pregnancy could have been the reason for this. Six months after the marriage, she gave
birth to a daughter, Susanna.Twins, son Hamnet and daughter Judith, followed almost two years later.

Shakespeare probably initially loved Hathaway, speculation supported by an early addition to one of his
sonnets (Sonnet 145), where he played off Anne Hathaway's name and said she saved his life (writing 'I hate from
hate away she threw/And saved my life, saying "not you."').Nevertheless, after only three years of marriage
Shakespeare left his family and moved to London, possibly because he felt trapped by Hathaway. Other evidence
to support this belief is that he and Anne were buried in separate (but adjoining) graves and, as has often been
noted, Shakespeare's will makes no specific bequeath to his wife aside from 'the second best bed with the
furniture'. This may seem like a slight, but many historians contend that the second best bed was typically the
marital bed, while the best bed was reserved for guests.The poem 'Anne Hathaway' by Carol Ann Duffy endorses
this view, describing how, for Shakespeare and his wife, the second best bed was 'a spinning world of forests,
castles', whilst 'In the other bed, the best, our guests dozed on, dribbling their prose'. A bed missing from an
inventory of Anne's brother's possessions (removed in contravention of their father's will) allows the explanation
that the item was an heirloom from the Hathaway family, that had to be returned.The law at the time also stated
that the widow of a man was automatically entitled to a third of his estate, so Shakespeare did not need to
mention specific bequests in the will.

Possible affaires with women

While in London, Shakespeare may have had affairs with different women. One anecdote along these lines is
provided by a lawyer named John Manningham, who wrote in his diary that Shakespeare had a brief affair with a
woman during a performance of Richard III.

Upon a time when Burbage played Richard the Third there was a citizen grew so far in liking with him, that
before she went from the play she appointed him to come that night unto her by the name of Richard the Third.
Shakespeare, overhearing their conclusion, went before, was entertained and at his game ere Burbage came.
Then, message being brought that Richard the Third was at the door, Shakespeare caused return to be made that
William the Conqueror was before Richard the Third.

The Burbage referred to is Richard Burbage, the star of Shakespeare's company, who is known to have played
the title role in Richard III. While this is one of the few surviving contemporary anecdotes about Shakespeare,
some scholars are sceptical of its validity. Still, the anecdote suggests that at least one of Shakespeare's
contemporaries (Manningham) believed that Shakespeare was heterosexual, even if he was not 'averse to an
occasional infidelity to his marriage vows'.Indeed, its significance has been developed to affording Shakespeare a
preference for "promiscuous women of little beauty and no breeding" in his honest acknowledgement that well-
born women are beyond his reach.

Possible evidence of other affairs are that twenty-six of Shakespeare's Sonnets are love poems addressed to a
married woman (the so-called 'Dark Lady').

Possible homoerocism

Shakespeare's sonnets are cited as evidence of his possible bisexuality. The poems were initially
published, perhaps without his approval, in 1609. One hundred and twenty-six of them appear to be love poems
addressed to a young man known as the 'Fair Lord' or 'Fair Youth'; this is often assumed to be the same person
as the 'Mr W.H.' to whom the sonnets are dedicated. The identity of this figure (if he is indeed based on a real
person) is unclear; the most popular candidates are Shakespeare's patrons, Henry Wriothesley, 3rd Earl of
Southampton and William Herbert, 3rd Earl of Pembroke, both of whom were considered handsome in their
youth.
 The only explicit references to sexual acts or physical lust occur in the Dark Lady sonnets, which
unambiguously state that the poet and the Lady are lovers. Nevertheless, there are numerous passages in the
sonnets addressed to the Fair Lord that have been read as expressing desire for a younger man. In Sonnet 13, he
is called 'dear my love', andSonnet 15 announces that the poet is at 'war with Time for love of you.' Sonnet
18 asks 'Shall I compare thee to a summers day?/Thou art more lovely and more temperate', and inSonnet
20 the narrator calls the young man the 'master-mistress of my passion'. The poems refer to sleepless nights,
anguish and jealousy caused by the youth. In addition, there is considerable emphasis on the young man's
beauty: in Sonnet 20, the narrator theorizes that the youth was originally a woman whom Mother Nature had
fallen in love with and, to resolve the dilemma of lesbianism, added a penis ('pricked thee out for women's
pleasure'), an addition the narrator describes as 'to my purpose nothing', which Samuel Schoenbaum interprets
as: 'worse luck for [the] heterosexual celebrant'.[16] In some sonnets addressed to the youth, such as Sonnet 52,
the erotic punning is particularly intense: 'So is the time that keeps you as my chest, Or as the wardrobe which the
robe doth hide, To make some special instant special blest, By new unfolding his imprisoned pride.' In Sonnet 20:
the narrator tells the youth to sleep with women, but to love only him: 'mine be thy love and thy love's use their
treasure'.

However, others have countered that these passages could be referring to intense platonic friendship,
rather than sexual love. In the preface to his 1961 Pelican edition, Douglas Bush writes,

Since modern readers are unused to such ardor in masculine friendship and are likely to leap at the
notion of homosexuality (a notion sufficiently refuted by the sonnets themselves), we may remember that
such an ideal, often exalted above the love of women, could exist in real life, from Montaigne to Sir
Thomas Browne, and was conspicuous in Renaissance literature.

Bush cites Montaigne, who distinguished male friendships from 'that other, licentious Greek love' , as
evidence for a platonic interpretation of the sonnets.

Another explanation is that the poems are not autobiographical but fiction, another of Shakespeare's
"dramatic characterization[s]", so that the narrator of the sonnets should not be presumed to be
Shakespeare himself.

In 1640, John Benson published a second edition of the sonnets in which he changed most of the
pronouns from masculine to feminine so that readers would believe nearly all of the sonnets were addressed
to the Dark Lady. Bensons modified version soon became the best-known text, and it was not until 1780
that Edmund Malone re-published the sonnets in their original forms.

The question of the sexual orientation of the sonnets' author was openly articulated in 1780, when George
Steevens, upon reading Shakespeare's description of a young man as his 'master-mistress' remarked, 'it is
impossible to read this fulsome panegyrick, addressed to a male object, without an equal mixture of disgust
and indignation'. Other English scholars, dismayed at the possibility that their national hero might have been
a 'sodomite', concurred with Samuel Taylor Coleridge's comment, around 1800, that Shakespeares love was
'pure' and in his sonnets there is 'not even an allusion to that very worst of all possible vices'. Robert
 Browning, writing of Wordsworth's assertion that 'with this key [the Sonnets] Shakespeare unlocked his
heart', famously replied in his poem House, 'If so, the less Shakespeare he!The controversy continued in the
20th Century. By 1944, the Variorum edition of the sonnets contained an appendix with the conflicting views
of nearly forty commentators.

7.4 Portraits of Shakespeare

Within four decades of its foundation in 1856, upwards of 60 portraits were offered for sale to
the National Portrait Gallery purporting to be of Shakespeare,but there are only two definitively accepted as
portraying him, both of which are posthumous. One is the engraving that appears on the cover of the First
Folio (1623) and the other is the sculpture that adorns his memorial in Stratford upon Avon, which dates from
before 1623. However, several paintings from the period have also been argued to represent him.

There is no concrete evidence that Shakespeare ever commissioned a portrait, and there is no written description
of his physical appearance. However, it is thought that portraits of him did circulate during his lifetime because of
a reference to one in the anonymous play Return from Parnassus (c. 1601), in which a character says "O sweet
Mr Shakespeare! I'll have his picture in my study at the court."

After his death, as Shakespeare's reputation grew, artists created portraits and narrative paintings
depicting him, most of which were based on earlier images, but some of which were purely imaginative. He was
also increasingly commemorated in Shakespeare memorial sculptures, initially in Britain, and later elsewhere
around the world. At the same time, the clamour for authentic portraits fed a market for fakes and
misidentifications.

There are two representations of Shakespeare that are unambiguously identified as him, although both may be
posthumous.

Droeshout print. An engraving by Martin Droeshout as frontispiece to the collected works of Shakespeare (the
First Folio), printed in 1622 and published in 1623. An introductory poem in the First Folio, by Ben Jonson,
implies that it is a very good likeness.

The bust in Shakespeare's funerary monument, in the choir of Holy Trinity Church, Stratford-on-Avon. This
half-length statue on his memorial must have been erected within six years after Shakespeares death in
1616. It is believed to have been commissioned by the poets son-in-law, Dr John Hall, and must have been
seen by Shakespeare's widow Anne. It is believed that the bust was made by the Flemish artist Gerard
Johnson.

Possible portraits
 There are several portraits dated to the 17th century that have been claimed to represent
Shakespeare, although in each the sitter is either unidentified or the identification with Shakespeare is
debatable.

Probably made during Shakespeare's lifetime

The Chandos portrait. This portrait is attributed to John Taylor, and dated to about 1610. In 2006,
the National Portrait Gallery, published a report authored by Tarnya Cooper saying it is the only painting with
any real claim to have been done from the life. The Cobbe portrait had not been discovered at that time, but
Cooper has since confirmed her opinion. The name arose as it was once in the possession of the Duke of
Chandos.

The Chess Players attributed to Karel van Mander. This was identified in 1916 as an image of Ben Jonson
and Shakespeare playing chess.Most scholars consider this to be pure speculation, but the claim was revived
in 2004 by Jeffrey Netto, who argued that the chess game symbolises "the well known professional rivalry
between these figures in terms of a battle of wits".

The Cobbe portrait: In 2009, Stanley Wells and the Shakespeare Birthplace Trust announced that they
believe this painting, which has been in the possession of the Cobbe family since the early 18th century, is a
portrait of Shakespeare drawn from life. The portrait is thought to have belonged initially to Shakespeare's
patron, Henry Wriothesley, 3rd Earl of Southampton, and to have been copied by another artist who created
the painting known as the Janssen portrait, which had already been claimed to depict Shakespeare. Tarnya
Cooper, the 17th century art specialist at the National Portrait Gallery, argues that both paintings
depict Thomas Overbury.

The Grafton Portrait by an unknown artist of a man whose age, like Shakespeare's, was 24 in 1588.
Otherwise there is no reason to believe it is Shakespeare except for a certain compatibility with the faces of
other leading contenders. It belongs to the John Rylands University Library Manchester.

A Man Clasping a Hand from a Cloud, by Nicholas Hilliard dated 1588. This was identified as Shakespeare
by Leslie Hotson in his book Shakespeare by Hilliard (1977). Skeptical scholars believe this is unlikely. Roy
Strong suggested that it is Lord Thomas Howard, first Earl of Suffolk. (National Portrait Gallery, London)

The Sanders portrait. This has a label attached identifying it as Shakespeare and stating that it was painted
in 1603. New scientific tests on the label and the oak panel suggest that it dates to Shakespeare's
lifetime, which, if true, would make this a likely authentic image of Shakespeare. It is attributed by a family
tradition to one John Sanders or possibly his brother Thomas. The identification has been queried on the
grounds that the subject appears to be too young for the 39 year old Shakespeare in 1603 and that the 23rd
April birth date on the label reflects the conventional date adopted in the 18th century, which is not certain to
 be accurate. The inscription on the label "This likeness taken" has been criticised as not a contemporary
formulation.

The Zuccari portrait. A life-size oval portrait painted on a wooden panel. This was owned by Richard
Cosway, who attributed it to Federico Zuccari, an artist who was contemporary with Shakespeare. It is no
longer attributed to him, nor is there any evidence to identify it as Shakespeare, however it was probably
painted during his lifetime and may depict a poet.
 8.List of works

8.1 Classifications of plays

William Shakespeare's plays have the reputation of being among the

greatest in the English language and in Western literature. Traditionally, the 37
plays are divided into the genres of tragedy, history, and comedy; they have been
translated into every major living language, in addition to being continually
performed all around the world.

Many of his plays appeared in print as a series of quartos, but approximately half of
them remained unpublished until 1623, when the posthumous First Foliowas
published. The traditional division of his plays into tragedies, comedies, and histories follows the categories used
in the First Folio. However, modern criticism has labelled some of these plays "problem plays" which elude easy
categorization, or perhaps purposefully break generic conventions, and has introduced the term romances for
what scholars believe to be his later comedies.

Theatre in Shakespeares time

When Shakespeare first arrived in London in the late 1580s or early 1590s, dramatists writing for London's
new commercial playhouses (such as The Curtain) were combining two different strands of dramatic tradition into
a new and distinctively Elizabethan synthesis. Previously, the most common forms of popular English theatre
were the Tudor morality plays. These plays, which blend piety with farce and slapstick, were allegories in which
the characters are personified of moral attributes who validate the virtues of a Godly life by prompting
the protagonist to choose such a life over Evil. The characters and plot situations are largely symbolic rather than
realistic. As a child, Shakespeare would likely have seen this type of play (along with, perhaps, mystery
plays and miracle plays).

The other strand of dramatic tradition was classical aesthetic theory. This theory derived ultimately from Aristotle;
in Renaissance England, however, the theory was better known through its Roman interpreters and practitioners.
At the universities, plays were staged in a more academic form as Roman closet dramas. These plays, usually
performed in Latin, adhered to classical ideas of unity and decorum, but they were also more static, valuing
lengthy speeches over physical action. Shakespeare would have learned this theory at grammar school,
where Plautus and especially Terence were key parts of the curriculum and were taught in editions with lengthy
theoretical introductions.

Theatre and stage setup

Archaeological excavations on the foundations of the Rose and the Globe in the late twentieth century
showed that all London English Renaissance theatres were built around similar general plans. Despite individual
differences, the public theatres were three stories high, and built around an open space at the centre. Usually
polygonal in plan to give an overall rounded effect, three levels of inward-facing galleries overlooked the open
centre into which jutted the stageessentially a platform surrounded on three sides by the audience, only the rear
being restricted for the entrances and exits of the actors and seating for the musicians. The upper level behind the
stage could be used as a balcony, as in Romeo and Juliet, or as a position for an actor to harangue a crowd, as
in Julius Caesar.

Usually built of timber, lath and plaster and with thatched roofs, the early theatres were vulnerable to fire, and
gradually were replaced (when necessary) with stronger structures. When the Globe burned down in June 1613, it
was rebuilt with a tile roof.

A different model was developed with the Blackfriars Theatre, which came into regular use on a long term basis in
1599. The Blackfriars was small in comparison to the earlier theatres, and roofed rather than open to the sky; it
resembled a modern theatre in ways that its predecessors did not.

Elisabethan Shakespeare

For Shakespeare as he began to write, both traditions were alive; they were, moreover, filtered through
the recent success of the University Wits on the London stage. By the late 16th century, the popularity of morality
and academic plays waned as the English Renaissance took hold, and playwrights like Thomas
Kyd and Christopher Marlowe revolutionised theatre. Their plays blended the old morality drama with classical
theory to produce a new secular form.The new drama combined the rhetorical complexity of the academic play
with the bawdy energy of the moralities. However, it was more ambiguous and complex in its meanings, and less
concerned with simple allegory. Inspired by this new style, Shakespeare continued these artistic
strategies,creating plays that not only resonated on an emotional level with audiences but also explored and
debated the basic elements of what it means to be human. What Marlowe and Kyd did for tragedy, John
Lyly and George Peele, among others, did for comedy: they offered models of witty dialogue, romantic action, and
exotic, often pastoral location that formed the basis of Shakespeare's comedic mode throughout his career.

Shakespeare's Elizabethan tragedies (including the history plays with tragic designs, such as Richard II)
demonstrate his relative independence from classical models. He takes from Aristotle and Horace the notion of
decorum; with few exceptions, he focuses on high-born characters and national affairs as the subject of tragedy.
In most other respects, though, the early tragedies are far closer to the spirit and style of moralities. They are
episodic, packed with character and incident; they are loosely unified by a theme or character. In this respect, they
reflect clearly the influence of Marlowe, particularly of Tamburlaine. Even in his early work, however, Shakespeare
generally shows more restraint than Marlowe; he resorts to grandiloquent rhetoric less frequently, and his attitude
towards his heroes is more nuanced, and sometimes more skeptical, than Marlowe's.By the turn of the century,
the bombast of Titus Andronicus had vanished, replaced by the subtlety of Hamlet.

In comedy, Shakespeare strayed even further from classical models. The Comedy of Errors, an adaptation
of Menaechmi, follows the model of new comedy closely. Shakespeare's other Elizabethan comedies are more
romantic. Like Lyly, he often makes romantic intrigue (a secondary feature in Latin new comedy) the main plot
element;even this romantic plot is sometimes given less attention than witty dialogue, deceit, and jests. The
"reform of manners," which Horace considered the main function of comedy, survives in such episodes as the
gulling of Malvolio.

Jacobean Shakespeare

Shakespeare reached maturity as a dramatist at the end of Elizabeth's reign, and in the first years of the
reign of James. In these years, he responded to a deep shift in popular tastes, both in subject matter and
approach. At the turn of the decade, he responded to the vogue for dramatic satire initiated by the boy
players at Blackfriars and St. Paul's. At the end of the decade, he seems to have attempted to capitalize on the
new fashion for tragicomedy,even collaborating with John Fletcher, the writer who had popularized the genre in
England.

The influence of younger dramatists such as John Marston and Ben Jonson is seen not only in the problem plays,
which dramatize intractable human problems of greed and lust, but also in the darker tone of the Jacobean
tragedies.[12] The Marlovian, heroic mode of the Elizabethan tragedies is gone, replaced by a darker vision of
heroic natures caught in environments of pervasive corruption. As a sharer in both the Globe and in the King's
Men, Shakespeare never wrote for the boys' companies; however, his early Jacobean work is markedly
influenced by the techniques of the new, satiric dramatists. One play, Troilus and Cressida, may even have been
inspired by the War of the Theatres.

Shakespeare's final plays hearken back to his Elizabethan comedies in their use of romantic situation and
incident.In these plays, however, the sombre elements that are largely glossed over in the earlier plays are
brought to the fore and often rendered dramatically vivid. This change is related to the success of tragicomedies
such as Philaster, although the uncertainty of dates makes the nature and direction of the influence unclear. From
the evidence of the title-page to The Two Noble Kinsmen and from textual analysis it is believed by some editors
that Shakespeare ended his career in collaboration with Fletcher, who succeeded him as house playwright for the
King's Men.These last plays resemble Fletcher's tragicomedies in their attempt to find a comedic mode capable of
dramatizing more serious events than had his earlier comedies.

Style

During the reign of Queen Elizabeth, "drama became the ideal means to capture and convey the
diverse interests of the time." Stories of various genres were enacted for audiences consisting of both the wealthy
and educated and the poor and illiterate.[16] Shakespeare served his dramatic apprenticeship at the height of the
Elizabethan period, in the years following the defeat of the Spanish Armada; he retired at the height of the
Jacobean period, not long before the start of the Thirty Years' War. His verse style, his choice of subjects, and his
stagecraft all bear the marks of both periods. His style changed not only in accordance with his own tastes and
developing mastery, but also in accord with the tastes of the audiences for whom he wrote.

While many passages in Shakespeare's plays are written in prose, he almost always wrote a large proportion of
his plays and poems in iambic pentameter. In some of his early works (like Romeo and Juliet), he even added
punctuation at the end of these iambic pentameter lines to make the rhythm even stronger. He and other
dramatists at the time used this form of blank verse for a lot of the dialogue between characters in order to elevate
drama to new poetic heights.

To end many scenes in his plays he used a rhyming couplet for suspense. A typical example is provided
in Macbeth: as Macbeth leaves the stage to murder Duncan (to the sound of a chiming clock), he says,

Hear it not Duncan; for it is a knell

That summons thee to heaven or to hell

Shakespeare's writing (especially his plays) also feature extensive wordplay in which double entendres and clever
rhetorical flourishes are repeatedly used. Humor is a key element in all of Shakespeare's plays. Although a large
amount of his comical talent is evident in his comedies, some of the most entertaining scenes and characters are
found in tragedies such as Hamlet and histories such as Henry IV, Part 1. Shakespeare's humor was largely
influenced by Plautus.

Soliloquies in plays

Shakespeare's plays are also notable for their use of soliloquies, in which a character makes a
speech to him- or herself so the audience can understand the character's inner motivations and conflict.

In his book Shakespeare and the History of Soliloquies, James Hirsh defines the convention of a Shakespearian
soliloquy in early modern drama. He argues that when a person on the stage speaks to himself or herself, they
are characters in a fiction speaking in character; this is an occasion of self-address. Furthermore, Hirsh points out
that Shakespearian soliloquies and "asides" are audible in the fiction of the play, bound to be overheard by any
other character in the scene unless certain elements confirm that the speech is protected. Therefore, a
Renaissance playgoer who was familiar with this dramatic convention would have been alert to Hamlet's
expectation that his soliloquy be overheard by the other characters in the scene. Moreover, Hirsh asserts that in
soliloquies in other Shakespearian plays, the speaker is entirely in character within the play's fiction. Saying that
addressing the audience was outmoded by the time Shakespeare was alive, he "acknowledges few occasions
when a Shakespearean speech might involve the audience in recognizing the simultaneous reality of the stage
and the world the stage is representing." Other than 29 speeches delivered by choruses or characters who revert
to that condition as epilogues "Hirsh recognizes only three instances of audience address in Shakespeare's plays,
'all in very early comedies, in which audience address is introduced specifically to ridicule the practice as
antiquated and amateurish.'"

Source material of the plays

As was common in the period, Shakespeare based many of his plays on the work of other playwrights
and recycled older stories and historical material. His dependence on earlier sources was a natural consequence
of the speed at which playwrights of his era wrote; in addition, plays based on already popular stories appear to
have been seen as more likely to draw large crowds. There were also aesthetic reasons: Renaissance aesthetic
theory took seriously the dictum that tragic plots should be grounded in history. This stricture did not apply to
comedy, and those of Shakespeare's plays for which no clear source has been established, such as Love's
Labour's Lost and The Tempest, are comedies. Even these plays, however, rely heavily on generic
commonplaces. For example, Hamlet (c.1601) may be a reworking of an older, lost play (the so-called Ur-
Hamlet),and King Lear is likely an adaptation of an older play, King Leir. For plays on historical subjects,
Shakespeare relied heavily on two principal texts. Most of the Roman and Greek plays are based
on Plutarch's Parallel Lives (from the 1579 English translation by Sir Thomas North,and the English history
plays are indebted to Raphael Holinshed's 1587 Chronicles.

While there is much dispute about the exact Chronology of Shakespeare plays, as well as the Shakespeare
Authorship Question, the plays tend to fall into three main stylistic groupings.

The first major grouping of his plays begins with his histories and comedies of the 1590s. Shakespeare's
earliest plays tended to be adaptations of other playwright's works and employed blank verse and little variation in
rhythm. However, after the plague forced Shakespeare and his company of actors to leave London for periods
between 1592 and 1594, Shakespeare began to use rhymed couplets in his plays, along with more dramatic
dialogue. These elements showed up in The Taming of the Shrew and A Midsummer Night's Dream. Almost all of
the plays written after the plague hit London are comedies, perhaps reflecting the public's desire at the time for
light-hearted fare. Other comedies from Shakespeare during this period include Much Ado About Nothing, The
Merry Wives of Windsor and As You Like It.

The middle grouping of Shakespeare's plays begins in 1599 with Julius Caesar. For the next few years,
Shakespeare would produce his most famous dramas, including Macbeth, Hamlet, and King Lear. The plays
during this period are in many ways the darkest of Shakespeare's career and address issues such as betrayal,
murder, lust, power and egoism.

The final grouping of plays, called Shakespeare's late romances, include Pericles, Prince of Tyre, Cymbeline, The
Winter's Tale and The Tempest. The romances are so called because they bear similarities tomedieval romance
literature. Among the features of these plays are a redemptive plotline with a happy ending, and magic and other
fantastic elements.

Canonical Plays

The plays are here according to the order in which they are given in the First Folio of 1623. Plays marked with
an asterisk (*) are now commonly referred to as the 'romances'. Plays marked with two asterisks (**) are
sometimes referred to as the 'problem plays'.
Comedies
The Tempest *
The Two Gentlemen of Verona
The Merry Wives of Windsor
Measure for Measure **
The Comedy of Errors
Much Ado About Nothing
Love's Labour's Lost
A Midsummer Night's Dream
The Merchant of Venice **
As You Like It
The Taming of the Shrew
All's Well That Ends Well **
Twelfth Night
The Winter's Tale *
Pericles, Prince of Tyre * (not included in the First Folio)
The Two Noble Kinsmen *
Histories
King John
Richard II
Henry IV, Part 1
Henry IV, Part 2
Henry V
Henry VI, Part 1
Henry VI, Part 2
Henry VI, Part 3
Richard III
Henry VIII
Tragedies
Troilus and Cressida **
Coriolanus
Titus Andronicus
Romeo and Juliet
Timon of Athens
Julius Caesar
Macbeth
Hamlet
King Lear
Othello
Antony and Cleopatra
Cymbeline*

Dramatic collaboration
Like most playwrights of his period, Shakespeare did not always write alone, and a number of his
plays were collaborative, although the exact number is open to debate. Some of the following
attributions, such as for The Two Noble Kinsmen, have well-attested contemporary documentation;
others, such as for Titus Andronicus, remain more controversial and are dependent on linguistic analysis
by modern scholars.

Cardenio, either a lost play or one that survives only in later adaptation Double Falsehood; contemporary reports
say that Shakespeare collaborated on it with John Fletcher.
Cymbeline, in which the Yale edition suggests a collaborator had a hand in the authorship, and some scenes (Act
III scene 7 and Act V scene 2) may strike the reader as un-Shakespearian compared with others.

Edward III (play), of which Brian Vickers' recent analysis concluded that the play was 40% Shakespeare and
60% Thomas Kyd.

Henry VI, Part 1, possibly the work of a team of playwrights, whose identities we can only guess at. Some
scholars argue that Shakespeare wrote less than 20% of the text.

Henry VIII, generally considered a collaboration between Shakespeare and John Fletcher.

Macbeth, Thomas Middleton may have revised this tragedy in 1615 to incorporate extra musical sequences.

Measure for Measure may have undergone a light revision by Thomas Middleton at some point after its original
composition.

Pericles, Prince of Tyre may include the work of George Wilkins, either as collaborator, reviser, or revisee.

Timon of Athens may result from collaboration between Shakespeare and Thomas Middleton; this might explain
its unusual plot and unusually cynical tone.

Titus Andronicus may be a collaboration with, or revision by George Peele.

The Two Noble Kinsmen, published in quarto in 1654 and attributed to John Fletcher and William Shakespeare;
each playwright appears to have written about half of the text.

Lost plays

Love's Labour's Won - a late sixteenth-century writer, Francis Meres, and a bookseller's list both list this
title among Shakespeare's recent works, but no play of this title has survived. It may have become lost, or it
may represent an alternative title of one of the plays listed above, such as Much Ado About Nothing or All's
Well That Ends Well.
Cardenio - the original of a late play by Shakespeare and Fletcher, referred to in several documents, has
not survived. It is believed to have re-worked a tale in Cervantes' Don Quixote. In 1727, Lewis
Theobaldproduced a play he called Double Falshood, which he claimed to have adapted from three
manuscripts of a lost play by Shakespeare that he did not name. Double Falshood does re-work the Cardenio
story, and modern scholarship generally agrees that Double Falshood includes fragments of Shakespeare's
lost play.

Plays possibly by Shakespeare

Edmund Ironside (play) - possibly by Shakespeare

 Sir Thomas More - a collaborative work by several playwrights, including Shakespeare. There is a
"growing scholarly consensus"that Shakespeare was called in to re-write a contentious scene in the play and
that "Hand D" in the surviving manuscript is that of Shakespeare himself.

Shakespeare and the textual problem

Unlike his contemporary Ben Jonson, Shakespeare did not have direct involvement in publishing his plays and
produced no overall authoritative version of his plays before he died. As a result, the problem of identifying what
Shakespeare actually wrote is a major concern for most modern editions.

One of the reasons there are textual problems is that there was no copyright of writings at the time. As a
result, Shakespeare and the playing companies he worked with did not distribute scripts of his plays, for fear that
the plays would be stolen. This led to bootleg copies of his plays, which were often based on people trying to
remember what Shakespeare had actually written.

Textual corruptions also stemming from printers' errors, misreadings by compositors or simply wrongly scanned
lines from the source material litter the Quartos and the First Folio. Additionally, in an age before standardised
spelling, Shakespeare often wrote a word several times in a different spelling, and this may have contributed to
some of the transcribers' confusion. Modern editors have the task of reconstructing Shakespeare's original words
and expurgating errors as far as possible.

In some cases the textual solution presents few difficulties. In the case of Macbeth for example,
scholars believe that someone (probably Thomas Middleton) adapted and shortened the original to produce the
extant text published in the First Folio, but that remains our only authorised text. In others the text may have
become manifestly corrupt or unreliable (Pericles or Timon of Athens) but no competing version exists. The
modern editor can only regularise and correct erroneous readings that have survived into the printed versions.

The textual problem can, however, become rather complicated. Modern scholarship now believes Shakespeare to
have modified his plays through the years, sometimes leading to two existing versions of one play. To provide a
modern text in such cases, editors must face the choice between the original first version and the later, revised,
usually more theatrical version. In the past editors have resolved this problem by conflating the texts to provide
what they believe to be a superior Ur-text, but critics now argue that to provide a conflated text would run contrary
to Shakespeare's intentions. In King Lear for example, two independent versions, each with their own textual
integrity, exist in the Quarto and the Folio versions. Shakespeare's changes here extend from the merely local to
the structural. Hence the Oxford Shakespeare, published in 1986 (second edition 2005), provides two different
versions of the play, each with respectable authority. The problem exists with at least four other Shakespearian
plays (Henry IV, part 1, Hamlet, Troilus and Cressida, and Othello).

Performance history

During Shakespeare's lifetime, many of his greatest plays were staged at the Globe Theatre and
the Blackfriars Theatre.Shakespeare's fellow members of the Lord Chamberlain's Men acted in his plays. Among
these actors were Richard Burbage (who played the title role in the first performances of many of Shakespeare's
plays, includingHamlet, Othello, Richard III and King Lear),Richard Cowley (who played Verges in Much Ado
About Nothing), William Kempe, (who played Peter in Romeo and Juliet and, possibly, Bottom in A Midsummer
Night's Dream) and Henry Condell and John Heminges, are most famous now for collecting and editing the plays
of Shakespeare's First Folio(1623).

Shakespeare's plays continued to be staged after his death until the Interregnum (16421660), when all public
stage performances were banned by the Puritan rulers. After theEnglish Restoration, Shakespeare's plays were
performed in playhouses with elaborate scenery and staged with music, dancing, thunder, lightning, wave
machines, and fireworks. During this time the texts were "reformed" and "improved" for the stage, an undertaking
which has seemed shockingly disrespectful to posterity.

Victorian productions of Shakespeare often sought pictorial effects in "authentic" historical costumes and
sets. The staging of the reported sea fights and barge scene in Antony and Cleopatra was one spectacular
example.Too often, the result was a loss of pace. Towards the end of the 19th century, William Poel led a reaction
against this heavy style. In a series of "Elizabethan" productions on a thrust stage, he paid fresh attention to the
structure of the drama. In the early twentieth century, Harley Granville-Barker directed quarto and folio texts with
few cuts,while Edward Gordon Craig and others called for abstract staging. Both approaches have influenced the
variety of Shakespearian production styles seen today.
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